By KATE BRUMBACK
ATLANTA (AP) — The NAACP and different organizations are asking a choose to guard private voter info that was seized by the FBI from an elections warehouse simply exterior Atlanta.
Georgia residents entrusted the state with their “delicate private info” after they registered to vote, and the Jan. 28 seizure of ballots and different election paperwork from the Fulton County elections hub “breached that assure, infringed constitutional protections of privateness, and interfered with the precise to vote,” the organizations stated in a movement filed late Sunday.
The movement asks the choose to “order affordable limits on the federal government’s use of the seized knowledge” and to ban the federal government from utilizing the information for functions aside from the legal investigation cited within the search warrant affidavit. That features prohibiting any efforts to make use of it for voter roll upkeep, election administration or immigration enforcement.
Georgia Common Election 2020 ballots are loaded by the FBI onto vans on the Fulton County Election Hub, Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026, in Union Metropolis, Ga., close to Atlanta. (AP Picture/Mike Stewart)
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Georgia Common Election 2020 ballots are loaded by the FBI onto vans on the Fulton County Election Hub, Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026, in Union Metropolis, Ga., close to Atlanta. (AP Picture/Mike Stewart)
In addition they need the choose to order that the federal government disclose a listing of all paperwork and information seized, the id of anybody who has accessed the information exterior of these concerned within the legal investigation, any copying of the information and all efforts to safe the data.
The Division of Justice didn’t instantly reply Monday to a request for touch upon the movement.
FBI brokers arrived on the elections hub simply south of Atlanta with a search warrant looking for paperwork associated to the 2020 election in Fulton County, together with: all ballots, tabulator tapes from the scanners that tally the votes, digital poll pictures created when the ballots have been counted after which recounted, and all voter rolls. The county has filed a movement looking for the return of the seized supplies.
President Donald Trump has fixated on Fulton, a Democratic stronghold and probably the most populous county within the state, asserting with out proof that widespread voter fraud there value him victory in Georgia in 2020.
An FBI agent’s affidavit introduced to a Justice of the Peace choose to acquire the search warrant says the legal investigation started with a referral from Kurt Olsen, who suggested Trump as he tried to overturn his 2020 election loss and now serves as Trump’s “director of election safety and integrity” with a mission to analyze Trump’s loss.
The movement was filed by the Legal professionals’ Committee for Civil Rights Underneath Legislation on behalf of the NAACP, Georgia and Atlanta NAACP organizations, and the Georgia Coalition for the Peoples Agenda. It notes that the seizure occurred because the Justice Division has been looking for unredacted state voter registration rolls.
The Justice Division has sued no less than 23 states and the District of Columbia to attempt to get them handy over detailed voter info. The company has stated it’s looking for the information as a part of an effort to make sure election safety, however Democratic officers and different critics fear that federal officers need to use the delicate knowledge for different functions. Federal courts in a number of states have rejected the Justice Division’s makes an attempt to get the information.
“These repeated efforts to entry 2020 election information, together with by the entity that now has custody of them, heightens considerations in regards to the privateness and safety of delicate voter knowledge and exacerbates the nippiness on voting rights,” the movement says.
